We encountered no other Togarites, yet I think that many were passing close to us in size. Going out, I wondered? If they showed themselves, father and Foley would make an end to them promptly. We stopped once and ate our sandwiches, keeping one of them only against disaster. We finished the water in the vacuum bottle. There was water now occasionally to be seen in pools on the rocks. The landscape had been continually changing. The light from overhead was long since gone. Occasionally we were in some tunnel or cave of darkness. Yet there always seemed a little light--as though the rocks themselves were radiating a glow. The air was changing. A brittle crispness. A dryness. And then, when at the termination of the effect of our fourth pellet we found ourselves on a vast metallic plain sloping down into darkness, it incongruously began to rain. A slow, fine drizzle. Overhead I could see moving dark clouds. We came upon a patch of soil, almost barren, but not quite, for there was sickly vegetation struggling in it. Tiny green things growing. Clumps of them, with small rock ridges a foot high lying like snakes. The drizzle was fine as a mist. After a few moments, it ceased. Abruptly I realized that the puffs of cloud were very small and close over our heads. And again my whole viewpoint shifted. I was a tremendous giant standing here, towering to the clouds. A tiny forest was here at my feet; the ridges were rocky ranges of hills. I strove to encompass thought of the journey as a whole. We had been only a few hours. It seemed that we had descended thousands of feet into the bowels of some vast world of naked rock. Perhaps we had. In our present size, I am sure the entire trip would have been miles of distance. Yet to father, up there now in that inconceivable titanic world, we were still near the surface of the porous rock fragment. We took another pellet, and the landscape grew. Alt gripped me. "See--the light!" A steady red spot of light was visible near by. Alt said: "Drake's signal." We saw Drake first. He stood in the growing forest as our dwindling bodies came down into it. The red light painted his figure as he leaned against a stunted tree-trunk. "Frank!" "Drake--Drake, we see you!" We adjusted our size. He came running forward. He called back: "Dianne! Ahlma, Dianne--they've come!" It was so good to feel his handclasp! "Father all right, Frank?" "Yes." "You've got the rock guarded?" "Yes, Drake, we--" And then I saw Dianne. The glory of her beauty swept me. She ran up and kissed me. "Frank, dear--" I do not know what I was to her then. But to me, this was not my sister. A thousand times more strongly now, I felt it. And no princess this. Just a girl! CHAPTER XIII _The Stowaway_